A labour of love – our front door

Where the past eight days have gone and what I’ve been doing that has prevented me from blogging…well…I can’t quite recall.

Mr Rigg and I took last week off from work and had a ‘stay-cation’ as my colleague put it.  We did home and garden improvements all week and it was exhausting! 

Buddy and I spent one afternoon guarding the front door as it dried after a new coat of paint.  But it looks lovely – I hope you’ll agree from the picture above.

This front door has been a true labour of love.  Back in October I briefly mentioned about the front door here.  If you’re interested in the restoration of our front door, read on…if not, I’ll be back with food related goodness shortly!

Finding the door
We set out to find the perfect front door to replace the ugly thing that came with the house.  We wanted to buy an old door, rather than a new one.  After much searching I came across Period Pine Doors on ebay and discovered that they are based near to Mr Rigg’s family.  We visited, fell in love with a beautiful old door that has different designs on each side.  A smarter side with the beading (this is what we’ve used for the front and can be seen in the picture) and a more rustic side that we’ve used inside.  We handed over our money and waited for it to be delivered.

Preparing the door
We spent hours painstakingly sanding, filling holes, then painting the door with a white undercoat.  We used car body filler to fill any unwanted cracks, as recommended by a friend – it’s solid stuff once it’s set.

Fitting the door
We hired a joiner to come and fit the door.  He cut a letter box into the door and hung the door.  We were so delighted and excited – finally here was our gorgeous new front door.

The problem(s) with the door…
Then the problems started.  The door moved/expanded and we came home from a weekend away and couldn’t open the front door!  Mr Rigg managed to get in (phew), but then the door wouldn’t shut!  And this was at about 11 o’clock at night… We managed to get the door shut that night, but then spent a couple of weeks having to use our back door.

It turns out that when old doors are striped off their old paint they are dipped into something (chemicals I guess).  It does a great job of removing the old paint, but it can also erode away of the original glue that was used to help hold the door together.  This is what had happened with our door, and as a result it had started to come apart!

Fixing the door
So we remove the lovely new front door, replaced the manky old one (thank goodness we hadn’t got rid of it).  Mr Rigg and I squeezed the door into our car and headed to my parents for the weekend.  My dad and Mr Rigg spent a day taking the door to pieces – yes, quite literally!  It was heartbreaking.  I couldn’t quite imagine that you could just take it to pieces and put it back together.  But it turns out you can, and you can do-it-yourself if your dad and husband-to-be are handy.  So they glued it all back together.

The old door

The door comes home
Because we’d used the super duper car body filler quite a bit of the beading had been snapped when the door had been taken apart.  So we had to re-fill it, re-sand it, re-paint it all over again.  Mr Rigg fitted the door this time, and we just prayed and waited.

Thankfully the door hasn’t moved since – yey!

Finishing touches
I spent ages trying to get just the right shade of paint for our front door.  I wanted to match it to the bluey-grey of our local National Trust property Dunham Massey.  In the end I settled for Farrow & Ball’s ‘Hague Blue’.  It’s not really very similar to the colour at Dunham Massey, but it’s perfect and just what we wanted. 

The door is finished off with black door furniture that bought online from a period ironmongery shop – there is a knocker, letterbox and handle.  Last week Mr Rigg gave it another lick of paint and replaced all the door seals. 

I have also planted a pretty pink rose that it growing up beside the front door.  When we bought the house it came with some of the original deeds and documents which I’ve enjoyed pouring over.  Our cottage and the one next door were originally called ‘Rose Cottages’ – hence I have planted the rose.  This is the first year that it has had lots of blooms.

It has been a real labour of love, we’ve put in a lot of time (and money) but it is so worth it.  Everytime we come home it is there to welcome us back and into our home.

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